1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to an optical disk recording apparatus, and in particular to method and device for checking or verifying the recording state of data.
2. Description of the Related Art
As a type of information recording technology, magneto-optical recording has been widely used to store a large amount of data onto a magneto-optical disk in which a laser beam is used to heat a small portion of the disk. The heating causes a weak magnetic field to change the orientation of the portion, thus recording onto the disk. The recorded data onto the disk is reproduced by using the magneto-optical Kerr effect which occurs when plane polarized light is reflected from the surface of the disk with slight elliptical polarization depending on the polarity of the reflecting portion on the disk. The magneto-optical Kerr effect is also used to check or verify the recording state of data.
There has been proposed a check method which can check the recording state while data is being recorded on the magnetic-optic disk in Japanese Patent Unexamined Publication No. 8-221911. According to this conventional method, when a recording beam produces a spot on the disk, s-polarized and p-polarized light components are detected from the reflected light at the spot and then a difference signal is produced by subtracting the one light component from the other. The amplitude of the different signal is initially increased and then decreased when the heating by the recording beam causes a decrease in the Kerr rotation angle. Since such an amplitude change of the difference signal ideally reflects the Kerr rotation angle, it can be used to check the recording state of data on the disk while data is being recorded.